For 76 days, Steve Callahan was adrift in a small inflatable raft in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, after a collision with a whale sank his sailboat. Callahan survived by “learning to live like an aquatic caveman,” catching fish and distilling salt water to drink, until he was rescued by a fisherman off Guadeloupe. He lived to tell the tale in a bestselling book, Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, and later became an advisor to director Ang Lee as he was working on the Oscar-winning film Life of Pi, about a survivor of a shipwreck stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific together with a Bengal tiger.
A film based on the book, directed by Joe Wein with Ang Lee as executive producer, will be screening at The Lexington Venue on Thursday, Oct. 10. LexObserver caught up with producer Robert Sennott, who will be at the screening for a Q&A.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
LexObserver: How did you get involved in this project?
Robert Sennott: I went to high school with Steve Callahan, the man that was adrift for 76 days in the five foot rubber life raft. He and I were on this track team together and friends in high school. Let’s fast forward. He’s 30. He goes through a divorce, is fractured by it. He spends his life energy on building this boat, a 21-foot sailboat, and really does a good job designing it. He launches it from Newport, Rhode Island, and tests it with a 600-mile journey to Bermuda. Then he attempted to sail from Cornwall, England to Antigua. He was hit by a whale, cracked the hull, and things really began to deteriorate.
He was found 76 days later, and I’ve followed his story ever since. I learned about it because he was on the front page of the Boston Globe. He was on Johnny Carson and all over the media. He wrote a book and it was on the New York Times bestseller list for 36 weeks.
Five years ago, I was sleeping, and I had a vivid dream about Steve, and a light bulb went off — when I woke up I said, I gotta read the book again. I wanted to tell Steve’s story in a documentary. Joe Wien, the director, was already working on it. I met Joe, and we got involved, really trying to tell this story to as many people in the world as possible.
LO: How did Ang Lee get involved?
RS: Life of Pi is this freaking iconic movie about this young man that’s faced with this incredibly heroic voyage. The director, Ang Lee, when he was researching for the film, he reached out to Steve. I’ll share a quote from Lee about his relationship with Steve:
“When I started thinking about the script for Life of Pi, I visited him in Maine. I brought Steve back to Taiwan with me to work on Life of Pi as a consultant, not only for the spiritual side but also for his experience, details and what he went through. He is a man we all cherish, who cherishes what’s good in life, and whose faith indeed helps us make the voyage.”
So Lee joined our film as an executive producer, and it’s made all the difference in the world. It’s really opening doors for us.
LO: What makes Steve’s story so compelling to you?
RS: Resilience, hope, and perseverance is so inspiring. The book overwhelms you with the description and the horror at times of his journey, yet the exhilaration of how he is able to figure every day, every moment is life or death, and just dealing with that… seeing how he coped with everything was so inspirational.
LO: How did you end up bringing 76 Days Adrift to the Lexington Venue?
RS: It’s a little indie theater, right? And theaters like this like our film, because it’s a little bit different, right? That’s what Ken [Hastings, owner of the Lexington Venue] is looking for. He’s not looking to run mainstream cinema at all of his screenings, right? He wants to give the community some other art forms, rather than just straight Hollywood shtick, right? So I reached out to him, and he was very interested in screening the film.